How does laser tattoo removal work? How does light remove ink from the skin?
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The “ink” is made of small-but-not-too-small particles of colored materials, usually metals.
This “ink” is deposited under the skin where it sets and is too big for the body to absorb.
Most laser removal techniques blast the particles apart into much much smaller particles that your body *can* then absorb and carry away to the blood stream to make it out through waste.
Tldr version is that it accelerates the process your body uses to fade them.
The reason tattoos fade over time is that the particles of ink get recognized as foreign by the immune system and taken up by macrophages to be destroyed. This process stops or slows way down at a certain point because some of the ink particles are just too damn big.
What the laser does is it zaps the pigments with a specific wavelength that they absorb, causing them to heat up very quickly and explode, breaking them into smaller pieces that the body’s immune cells can process and get rid of.
It basically reduces the size of the pigment bits allowing your WBC to remove it.
Smarter every day has a nice video explaining it.
I’ll get the link
It doesn’t do the removing. Your immune system does the removing. The laser breaks the ink bubbles up to be small enough to be taken away by the immune system.
It’s the same thing that happens to regular fading tattoos, just that it happens to all of the tattoo.
Tattoos stay because the ink particles are too big to be carried away by your cells’ garbage disposal mechanisms.
The laser doesn’t remove the ink, just heats it up and breaks apart the pigments into smaller bits. These pieces are then small enough to be carried away. They’re absorbed into the body and eventually excreted.
The laser penetrates the top of the skin. Then hits the tattoo Ink under the upper skin. Breaking it up enough for your body to get rid of it.
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